USA

ByCompiled from wire service reports by Robert Kilborn and Ross AtkinJune 23, 2005

An unidentified pilot of a U-2 spy plane was killed in a crash in southwest Asia while returning from a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom - the Afghanistan war - the military announced. No details were immediately provided about the location or the circumstances. The U-2 is a high-altitude surveillance plane.

Brennan Hawkins, the 11-year-old who wandered away from his Boy Scout camp and was lost in a Utah forest for four days, was found alive and in good condition Tuesday by a house painter in an all-terrain vehicle. The rescue at 9,400 feet ended a massive search. At one point, the boy said he saw some volunteer searchers on horseback but was afraid to approach them.

The Senate agreed Wednesday to give federal regulators clear authority to override state objections to the siting of liquefied natural gas import facilities, rejecting a proposal that would have allowed governors to block a project because of public health or environmental concerns.

Security measures meant to keep nuclear material out of US ports are porous and prone to false alarms, scientists told Congress Tuesday. Faulty radiation detectors that sound numerous false alarms are part of the problem, said a security official with the Port of New York and New Jersey.

Scientists in Pasadena, Calif., said they may have detected signals from the world's first solar sail spacecraft. But they cautioned that it could take hours or even days to figure out exactly where the $4 million Cosmos 1 is traveling. The signals were picked up late Tuesday after an all-day search for the spacecraft, which suddenly stopped communicating after its launch from a Russian submarine. The mission is a project of the Planetary Society, a group founded by the late astronomer Carl Sagan.

The defending champion Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs square off Thursday night in the seventh and decisive game in the NBA Finals, the league's first winner-take-all showdown since 1994. The NBA also announced that it had reached a six-year collective bargaining agreement with the players' association.

Almost 1,300 federal and local law-enforcement agents joined forces for a pre-dawn raid in Los Angeles Tuesday to arrest 36 gang members, including 23 of the notorious Latino Vineland Boyz, with alleged links to the shooting deaths of two police officers.